4/24: I donated platelets, which turns out takes a lot more time than whole blood donation. I was starving during and after and finally got to Junior’s for a pastrami reuben, disco fries, and a shared slice of red velvet cheesecake. Ate it all so fast that no pictures exist.

4/25: I was fairly prepped and ready for an easy 3 on the treadmill since it was pouring outside, but stopped by the Book of Mormon lottery and was successful. So we scrapped the gym plan, stopped by City Kitchen for ilili box gyros and Dough donuts, then caught the show. Book of Mormon was great and made me psyched for Hamilton on June 3rd. So soon!

4/26: I made it home from a long work day in the Bronx (after spending Tuesday in Staten Island) and had plans to do a park loop but just could not bring myself to get out there. I put my GPS watch on and everything but had to take it off around 7 and admit defeat.

4/27: I had evening plans for Book Club instead of guided Speedwork, so I did an ‘easy’ loop around the park in the morning, about 2 hours later than usual. Holy humidity. 5.4 miles,

4/28: Rest day, but I was introduced to the below Austrian cookies (well, there’s no cookie part really, so not sure what they count as) and now have requests to bring them to Book Club and work. I’m going to try to pop them in the freezer to make mini Bluth’s frozen bananas.

4/29: Bronx Zoo Run for the Wild “5K”. So a 5K is the remaining distance I have left to PR this spring (10K, 10 Mile, Half Marathon, and 4 Miler done). I wisely decided not to make this race my attempt based on the humidity and the company and I’m so glad. The course was pretty boring at first (a lot of parking lot out and back in the first mile), then we saw some zebras and giraffes. There was a smattering of other animals. All the money raised went back into the zoo and conservation efforts.

My goal was to run at a pace that kept my heart rate down and didn’t get me too sweaty. We stayed conversational the whole time, but with high humidity and climbing temperatures, sweat was unavoidable.

The post-race spread was amazing (apples AND oranges, bagels AND muffins), then later there was pulled chicken BBQ sandwiches and ice cream. We dropped stuff off at the car then puttered around another good chunk of the zoo to see some lions, bears, and red pandas (oh my).

At night, I joined some teammates to cheer on the Red Hook Crit 5K and some of the bike races. It was so much fun to cheer this because the energy of the runners and the crowd was great (we were given cowbells and also brought our own). I could only stay for some of the women’s cyclists but witnessed the pileup right in front of us. I plan to make a full evening out of it next year (but will probably not run it if we’re being honest).

4/30: Church of the Sunday Long Run. I got lucky that Carly had joined and also wanted 10 miles in my pace range of 10:30. We ended up going a little slower then had to pause a couple times while I once again tried to figure out the best route from DUMBO to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I accidentally cut the route a little short from going up Kent Ave. so we included 2/3 of a park loop and ended at Juice Press for our free juice.

Total: 18.9 miles out of a planned 22-27.